198 
BURSTING OP HEAVY GUNS. 
facturing guns for others—not like our Government, having only to 
suit their own requirements, but possibly those of others whose 
sanguine temperament might make them not care for the extra 
expense due to superfluous strength. Further, if we consider that the 
application of the F. powder was the act of the Italian Government, 
and if we remember the difficulty in tracing home the blame to the 
only ingredient that was not English, we shall desire to show sufficient 
fair play to Sir W. Armstrong to wait for further information before 
we condemn his gun—a gun which, remember, was a design passing 
in a single stride from 38 tons to 100, and which, manufactured in 
1875, still remains in 1880 the most powerful gun in the world, 
Note. —The conclusions of the Italian Commission on the bursting of the 
100-ton gun may he briefly summed up as follows:—Supposing the gun to be 
made as specified, it is sufficiently strong longitudinally to resist about three times 
the strain that should fall on it from a battering charge exploding in an ordinary 
way. Its longitudinal strength is, in fact, greater than its strength in a tangential 
direction in the proportion of 5 to 4, and is about equal proportionally to that of 
other guns made on the same system, as well as all their other service guns, and 
there is no evidence of bad material in the investigations made by the Commission 
up to the present time. Consequently, the gun being more than sufficiently 
strong to resist the normal pressure of explosion of a battering charge, the Com¬ 
mission are driven to the conclusion that the charge was fired in such a way as to 
give rise to an abnormal pressure in the gun, arising, it is suggested, from 
irregular ignition, such as may occur in firing an untubed charge of great mag¬ 
nitude with an axial vent. The Commission recommend the further investigation 
of this subject, on which they observe Captain Noble’s experiments furnish the 
only data hitherto obtained. In the meantime they suggest a reduction of the 
present battering charge from 551 lbs. to 507 lbs., which is to be made up in a 
cartridge with a tube, to ensure the regular ignition of the powder. They hint 
in no way at any alteration in the construction of future guns. The Commission 
appear to have gone carefully into the matter, and to give good ground for their 
conclusions. I cannot think, myself, that their view as to the future is sound. 
To say that the strain thrown on the gun was of a new and abnormal kind, and 
that previous experience called for no greater provision of strength than was made 
in the gun, is one thing; to say that no change is to be made in future guns is 
another thing altogether. Surely if we learn that a peculiar class of strain may 
fall on a gun longitudinally we ought to provide for it, and not content ourselves 
with saying that such a strain is abnormal and ought not to occur, and that we do 
all that we ought in providing a gun as strong longitudinally as tangentially. If 
the gun bursts, there is little satisfaction in proving that it behaved unfairly to us 
in doing so. If a liability to a special strain longitudinally exists, we ought to 
provide for it, and it can easily be done. 
